AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



was not a case of alignment by parties but rather a combination of East 

 against West; of the city and business interests of the East against the 

 principal agricultural regions of the country. Agricultural America sup- 

 ported the bill." 30 This first defeat led to the formation in St. Paul, on 

 July ii and 12, 1924, of the American Council of Agriculture, with George 

 N. Peek as president, the avowed purpose of which was to pass the meas- 

 ure which had just been defeated. After this, the evidences of unrest appear 

 to have waned somewhat. Wheat prices in particular showed some signs of 

 rising, temporarily at least, and there was a noticeable adjustment in the 

 exchange values of farm and nonfarm products. 31 



If anything, the number of votes that the defeated McNary-Haugen 

 proposal got convinced the administration that the demands of the farmers 

 could not be overlooked, regardless of the legislation that already had 

 been passed in their behalf. At the close of the Sixty-eighth Congress on 

 June 7, 1924, there were before the Senate and House Committees on 

 Agriculture several proposals for cooperative marketing. They were the 

 Curtis-Aswell, the Capper-Williams, the Smith, and the Tincher bills. 

 During the summer of 1924 President Coolidge said that he proposed 

 to appoint a committee to investigate and report to Congress measures 

 that would be of help to the farmers in their marketing. This was their 

 main need, in so far as he was concerned. In November Coolidge ap- 

 pointed delegates to an agricultural conference which he hoped would 

 evolve a plan that would do something for the farmers comparable to 

 what had been done for other segments of the economy. By March, 1925, 

 this conference had made three reports to the President. 32 



This conference conducted hearings during the greater part of January, 

 1925. On January 14, in its first report, it recommended that a more liberal 

 credit policy be adopted by the Federal Intermediate Credit Banks, and 

 that a carefully administered leasing system for the grazing lands in the 

 public domain also be put into operation. On January 28, the conference 

 recommended the passage of a cooperative-marketing bill corresponding 

 to the Capper-Williams bill; the placing of additional tariff duties on 



30. Minnesota Farm Bureau News (Central Edition, Grand Rapids), July i, 1924. 



31. See chart in Black, American Economic Review, XVIII (September, 1928), 

 p. 254. 



32. "The President's Agricultural Conference," Congressional Digest, IV (Octo- 

 ber, 1925), pp. 265, 267-68; also ibid. (March, 1925), p. 194. 



